When I was 7 years old, my favorite television shows were “Batman,” “The Rifleman” and “Gilligan’s Island.” That was back in the three-channel 1960s.
The other night, my 7-year-old son cautioned me as I mindlessly pumped the remote control. “Dad, you’re up in the 500s,” he said, as I accidentally scrolled into pay-per-view land.
Why so many channels? TV today fills a million niches. There are whole channels devoted to “boy TV.” No longer relegated just to cartoons and sports, boys have mountains of content to pick from.
The other day, on the drive home from school, my older son urged his mom to speed up.
“I want to get home in time to watch the truck com-pee-tion,” he said.
“What?” my wife asked.
“Truck com-pee-tion,” he repeated.
He was mispronouncing “truck competition,” an item he had seen on the digital TV listings. On any given night, the boy can watch monster trucks, science programs and survival documentaries.
Here is a quick guide to cable TV for boys.
“MythBusters” (Discovery). This show is supposed to be about testing myths and urban legends. It’s actually about grown men playing with dynamite.
Episodes attempt to answer such burning questions as: Can a bullet from James Bond’s gun pierce a propane cylinder? And can you drop TNT into a lake and create a wave you can surf on?
My son and I sit slack-jawed for hours watching “MythBusters.” We break the silence occasionally to turn to each other and say, “Whoa.”
“How It’s Made” (Science Channel). This show is like a neverending sixth-grade field trip.
In each episode, the show takes you inside a manufacturing plant. Its magic is making even the most pedestrian objects seem interesting. I once watched a whole segment on how they make lapel pins commemorating the Canadian national hockey team.
Look for coming episodes on binoculars, rubber boots, tortilla chips and cuckoo clocks.
“Monster Jam” (Speed TV). This is the aforementioned monster-truck competition. Tiny trucks with giant tires climb over flattened junkers in arenas around America.
This dance of sheet metal and iron is strangely hypnotic. It strikes at the pleasure centers of a boy’s brain like a shot of dopamine.
“Survivorman” (Discovery). This show features Les Stroud, a Canadian survival expert, who goes it alone in harsh environs with little more than a harmonica and video camera.
A similar program, “Man vs. Wild,” also on Discovery, features Bear Grylls. Mr. Grylls is prone to such survival theatrics as hacking off the head of a poisonous snake and eating the remaining carcass like a strand of spaghetti.
My son came up to me breathlessly one night to explain how one of the survivor guys on TV had just eaten the heart of a sheep and used its skin for a sleeping bag.
“Did he at least cook the heart,” I said.
“No,” said my son, his eyes widening. “He ate it raw.”
Let’s see Thurston Howell III do that.
